Has anyone else noticed many of the large on line gun vendors all have tons of pre owned LE 40 cal handguns to sell? No 9mm, or 45 ACP. Just tons of 40. Is that caliber becoming that unpopular? Even the SS pre owned gun show inventory has plenty of LE M&P 40 trade ins. Their 40 compacts look brand new, with virtually no wear. So any speculation as to why so many departments are dumping their 40’s? GARY.

Last edited by N4KVE on Fri Aug 10, 2018 6:28 pm, edited 1 time in total.

My agency went from .40 to 9mm because the FBI did. They copied them for the same reasons. Cheaper costs in ammo for training. Both in bulk pricing and training costs due to more weaker and non shooters able to qualify.

I personally love the .40 S&W. It is my go to cartridge and does amazing work against barriers.

Anyways, that is why agencies are going to 9mm. FBI did because they're a bunch of weak wristed paper pushers.

My agency went from .40 to 9mm because the FBI did. They copied them for the same reasons. Cheaper costs in ammo for training. Both in bulk pricing and training costs due to more weaker and non shooters able to qualify.

Polk County Sheriff's Office went from .40 to 9mm as did most of the cities in Polk for the reasons you mentioned.

An Instructor told me that the Hornady Critical Duty round they use makes the 9mm just as effective as any .40 with less recoil, meaning faster follow up shots...

The good news is if you are a .40 fan you will find some great bargains!

As mentioned above, the FBI is often the measuring stick police agencies use for firearm related choices. This is unfortunate because the FBI isn't always the best thermometer to use for individual agency needs. And it certainly isn't a valid thermometer for civilian use.

Agencies will from time to time switch out their service weapons to a completely different make/model and even caliber. This is often based on the biases of those in charge of such decisions regardless of actual need of the staff. It is often a bean-counter decision or the agency received an offer it simply couldn't turn down from a fiscal perspective. Line staff usually has little if any input in my experience (27 years and counting). So it doesn't mean that what they switched from suddenly became ineffective but rather a new administration may have come in or someone like Glock cut prices to the point of the absurd just to get the contract and the agency just couldn't pass up the deal.

Is the .40 S&W dead? Nope. Is it dying? Nope. Is it on it's way out? Nope. It has simply lost it's flavor of the month status to 9mm which lost it's flavor of the month status years ago to the .40. There is still a lot of L.E. that has .40 in their holster and their are still a lot of civilians that have .40 for their own use.

Having said that, due to the winds of the industry, a lot of L.E. is dropping the .40 and as a result a lot of civilians are 'panic' dropping the .40 because they think for some reason it's about to go extinct by next Thursday. I saw this trend last year looking at Armslist and FGT. People wanting to sell or trade their .40's. I had gotten out of .40 a few years ago to concentrate on 9mm (from a prepping perspective) but when I saw the plethora of .40's being dumped on the market I jumped back into the caliber with both feet. In the last 6 months I've purchased three almost brand new Glock 22.4 pistols at prices that I couldn't pass up. One came with a high end 9mm conversion barrel as well so I can shoot either .40 or 9mm out of any of those platforms. And with LEO trade in prices being at or around the $300 mark...well, imo it's time to buy into this caliber in a strong way. Ten years from now the FBI will switch back because 9mm suddenly starts bouncing off bad guys and folks will start dumping their 9mm's.

From a big picture perspective, a Glock 22 is much better than a Glock 17 as an example. Why? Well with a G17 I can shoot 9mm....and that's it. With a G22 I can shoot .40, .357sig or 9mm with the simply change of a barrel. I like options like that!

So yeah, lots of agencies/people dumping the .40 S&W. Good! Means very good deals abound and ammo will be plentiful. Win-win.

It just doesn't stand out as doing anything better than the rest so all the millions spent developing the round and then producing guns to shoot it with just seemed kind of pointless.

Actually, at the time the .40 S&W was developed the 9mm wasn't quite as good of a round as it is today in terms of the ammunition. And neither was the .45acp too be honest. The advent of the .40 S&W which achieved good penetration/expansion forced the ammunition companies to take another look at keep the 9mm and .40 S&W viable since there were so many weapons already in the field. It worked. All caliber-bias aside, among the service calibers today there is no one head-n-shoulders winner in the group. Having been in the surgery room to take chain-of-custody of the bullet(s) used in a shooting as well as many discussions with those involved with the same I can say that a surgeon isn't going to know whether the wound was caused by a 9mm or a .40 or a .45acp or a .357sig until he/she actually removes the bullet. That's because the terminal performance among service rounds using modern ammunition is pretty much the same.

So one thing the development of the .49 S&W did 'back then' was to help pave the way to making the 9mm and .45acp a better round. And it succeeded. I know for example that Gold Dot has tweaked the 9mm several times to what it is today. So that's a good thing all the way around and the fact that the 9mm/45acp is now as 'good' as the .40 S&W in no way diminishes the .40 S&W.

Has anyone else noticed many of the large on line gun vendors all have tons of pre owned LE 40 cal handguns to sell? No 9mm, or 45 ACP. Just tons of 40. Is that caliber becoming that unpopular? Even the SS pre owned gun show inventory has plenty of LE M&P 40 trade ins. Their 40 compacts look brand new, with virtually no wear. So any speculation as to why so many departments are dumping their 40’s? GARY.

So,that doesn’t mean they did not trade in their .40 calibers for new .40 calibers as did my local department. Most departments are forced to purchase from the manufacturer that submits the lowest qualified proposal because of budget restraints. Most US manufacturers are not able to or will not sell below costs as Glock does........